IMSA Roar Before the Rolex 24 Entry List Is Out, And It's Impressive

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• The big news is that the Rolex 24 features 61 entries, compared to the COVID-trimmed field for 2021 of 49 cars.

• A total of 35 cars will be GTs—cars that started out as production cars—and the rest will be purpose-built prototypes.

• The Roar Before the 24 test is scheduled for January 21-23, one week before the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

The entry list for the Roar Before the 24 test at Daytona International Speedway – a practice session scheduled for the week before the Rolex 24 at Daytona—was released Wednesday, and since everyone who will race in the Rolex 24 should be at the Roar, the list is essentially the field for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship opener.

The big news: 61 entries, compared to the COVID-trimmed field for 2021 of 49 cars, which was still up from 2020’s 38, before the LMP3 class was added to beef up the show.

And the even bigger news is where the majority of that increase came from—the new GT Daytona Pro class, which replaces the defunct GT Le Mans class. You’ll recall that GT Le Mans was the once-healthy playground for the Chevrolet Corvette, Ford GT, BMW M8, Porsche 911, Ferrari 488 and other sports cars that were typically factory-backed and used all professional drivers. But some races in 2021 had only the two Corvettes and one quasi-privateer Porsche, so there was no question it wouldn’t be back for 2022.

Enter GT Daytona Pro, which was created by making the largely amateur GT Daytona class into a Pro-Am situation, much like the 24 Hours of Le Mans handles it. The GT Daytona and GT Daytona Pro classes will race the same cars, but they’ll be competing with other in that same class for a unique podium and championship.